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known that I write at all.” He recognized that anything he said would be scanned scrupulously for partisan purposes. The slightest departure from the printed record would be distorted by friends as well as enemies. Even his simple reiteration of a previous position might, in the midst of a campaign, give it new emphasis. He preferred to point simply to the party platform that he had endorsed. His few lapses justified his fears. A facetious comment to a Democratic reporter that “he would like to go into Kentucky to discuss issues but was afraid of being lynched” was made into a campaign issue.

Underlying this policy of self-restraint was another important but unvoiced political reality: Lincoln had to maintain the cohesion of the new Republican Party, a coalition of old Democrats, former Whigs, and members of the nativist American Party. Informing a Jewish friend that he had never entered a Know Nothing lodge, as accused by Democrats, he cautioned that “our adversaries think they can gain a point, if they could force me to openly deny this charge, by which some degree of offence would be given to the Americans. For this reason, it must not publicly appear that I am paying any attention to the charge.” Although Lincoln himself had disavowed any sympathy with the nativists, and had actually invested in a German paper, many Republicans remained hostile to immigrants, and their support was essential.

Lincoln knew this election would not be determined by a single issue. While opposition to slavery extension had led to the creation of the Republican Party and dominated the national debate, in many places other issues took precedence. In Pennsylvania, the leading iron producer in the nation, and in New Jersey, the desire for a protective tariff was stronger than hostility to slavery. In the West, especially among immigrant groups, multitudes hoped for homestead legislation providing free or cheap land to new settlers, many of whom had been hard hit by the Panic of 1857. “Land for the Landless” was the battle cry. And when, in the midst of the campaign, President Buchanan vetoed a mild Homestead Act, many in Indiana and throughout the West turned to Lincoln. All of these issues had been carefully addressed in the Republican Party platform. Had the election been fought on the single issue of slavery, it is likely that Lincoln would have lost.

WHILE LINCOLN KEPT a strategic silence in Springfield, Seward stepped forward to speak on public issues and provide the drama and excitement of the campaign. Traveling by train, steamboat, and carriage with an entourage (which included Fanny and her friend Ellen Perry; Charles Francis Adams and his son, Charles Junior; along with a contingent of politicians), Seward opened his tour in Michigan. From there, he proceeded west to Wisconsin and Minnesota, south to Iowa and Kansas, and east to Illinois and Ohio.

At every stop, Seward was met with “cannons, brass bands, and processions of torch-bearing ‘Wide Awakes’”—young Republicans dressed in striking oilcloth capes and caps—who generated enthusiasm for the party. They created a circus atmosphere at Republican rallies, surrounding the perimeter of crowds and marching in meandering, illuminated processions. One such march took several hours to pass the Lincoln house in Springfield. “Viewed from an elevated position, it wound its sinuous track over a length of two miles, seeming, in its blazing lights and glittering uniforms, like a beautiful serpent of fire,” wrote John Hay. “The companies…ignited vast quantities of Roman candles, and as the drilled battalions moved steadily on, canopied and crowded with a hissing and bursting blaze of fiery splendor…the enthusiasm of the people broke out in wild cheerings.” Other candidates mustered marching clubs, but with less success. One group of Douglas partisans designated themselves the “Choloroformers,” ready and able to “put the Wide Awakes to sleep.”

Fifty thousand people gathered to hear Seward speak in Detroit, and the fervor only increased as his tour moved west. Thousands waited past midnight